2 hours ago
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Ross Douthat: Officially Cool
Neil Gaiman engages Ross on the issue of Dumbledore's sexual preference and Ross defends himself ably. But in case Ross has missed the big picture: Neil Freakin' Gaiman is reading him.
That's awesome.
Who cares if Gaiman disagrees, really? If Gaiman, or Frank Miller, or Brian Vaughn called me an idiot, I'd basically explode with delight. Or whatever wouldn't sound really girly and stupid.
Go Ross; he's my new hero.
P.S.: The Dumbledore-gay thing? I don't know that I ever consciously suspected it while reading the books, but it doesn't surprise me at all and, to me anyway, kind of makes some sense.
Not that you'll see Neil Gaiman reading this stupid blog . . .
That's awesome.
Who cares if Gaiman disagrees, really? If Gaiman, or Frank Miller, or Brian Vaughn called me an idiot, I'd basically explode with delight. Or whatever wouldn't sound really girly and stupid.
Go Ross; he's my new hero.
P.S.: The Dumbledore-gay thing? I don't know that I ever consciously suspected it while reading the books, but it doesn't surprise me at all and, to me anyway, kind of makes some sense.
Not that you'll see Neil Gaiman reading this stupid blog . . .
Hey mama, make that pumpkin pie!
The great Robert Goulet is in critical condition, having recently been diagnosed with interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. He is currently in Cedars-Sinai awaiting a lung transplant and we can only hope for the best. But in the meantime, check out Goulet's website, particularly the clips for his old ESPN promos for college basketball: "The only thing more dramatic than my hairdresser Ricardo is a game-winning three-pointer on ESPN!" Also: "When it comes to live entertainment, you got dinner theater, that performance-art hippie crap, and NC-2A basketball on ESPN!"
Justice League News
Lots of updates today, on Jessica Biel not playing Wonder Woman; on Barry Allen vs. Wally West as Flash; and on a possible casting choice for Superman.
That's all fine, but what I want to know is this:
Who's playing Gleek? Because if they try to CGI him, this movie is going to be lame. CGI space monkeys never work.
That's all fine, but what I want to know is this:
Who's playing Gleek? Because if they try to CGI him, this movie is going to be lame. CGI space monkeys never work.
Can This Possibly Be True?
I lean toward "no," because this is the sort of routine that only movie villains go to the trouble of concocting:
Copperfield designed part of his show around "a system for picking up women." During his show, David goes into the audience and chooses women to come on stage. We're told that if David likes a girl, he'll use code words with assistants like "mama" and "secrecy." The assistants mark the women on a map of the inside of the Hollywood Theater at MGM Grand. After the show, the women are brought backstage -- and that's where the profiling begins.
The women are told that David may use them in his show when he comes to their hometown. They are then photographed with a digital camera, asked questions like, "What is your favorite men's cologne?" and "Where do you like to vacation?" We're told one of those vacation spots mentioned by staff is the Bahamas, where the accuser claims she was assaulted. Copperfield owns a cluster of islands in the Bahamas -- which he bought for $50 million.
This may explain the FBI's interest in David's camera system and hard drive. If the accuser is a woman who was brought on stage, the FBI would be interested in a possible M.O.
Who Is, "Your Mother," Trebek?
After a huge upset victory over a three-day champ, Galley Friend Nick Swezey won his second appearance on Jeopardy! last night. It was a tough battle, but Swezey pulled it out with a Final Jeopardy question on geometry. Well played!
Trailer City
New trailers for both Rambo and I Am Legend and, amazingly, both are heavy on interesting, lonely atmospherics.
I'm totally almost fooled.
I'm totally almost fooled.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I'll take The Rapists for $500
Congratulations to our Weekly Standard colleague Nicholas Swezey, who appeared on Jeopardy! last night and won. The category was "B.C. Quotes" and the question (or answer) was from which work is the following quote taken: "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
Nick answered correctly with Sun Tzu's The Art of War and successfully outbid the reigning champ. Nick continues his quest on tonight's show, so stay tuned. The Galley Slaves wish him well and no, we really don't know how well he does, owing to a nondisclosure agreement. In unrelated news, Nick recently purchased a Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT sedan.
Kidding.
Nick answered correctly with Sun Tzu's The Art of War and successfully outbid the reigning champ. Nick continues his quest on tonight's show, so stay tuned. The Galley Slaves wish him well and no, we really don't know how well he does, owing to a nondisclosure agreement. In unrelated news, Nick recently purchased a Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT sedan.
Kidding.
Bionic Change
I wonder whether or not it's fair to render judgment on Bionic Woman. The show's numbers are holding up pretty well and, four episodes in, we have at least some sense of what the show is. And while that could change, what it is right now is pretty unappealing.
Bionic Woman has all sorts of problems. Some of them, like the tacked on little-sister storyline, are understandable. Some of them, like the underwritten and not-terribly-charismatic lead, are structural. And some of them--like the incompetent editing, poor scoring, and laughable f/x--are incomprehensible. (Battlestar Galactica and Heroes have raised the bar to point where there just shouldn't be any compromises made in f/x on TV.)
That last category of problems is readily fixable given a talented, engaged showrunner. Some of the other problems are less easily fixed.
Take the lead, Jaime Sommers: As written, Sommers vacillates widely, from naïve over-achiever, to hardened bad-ass, to dim, struggling parental surrogate. Who is she really? So many shows have grappled with strong female leads in recent years—Buffy, Karen Sisco, Alias, Veronica Mars—that if you can’t get this basic characterization right, then you might was well fold up shop.
Instead, with Sommers, we get a muddled mess. We’re told that she was bright enough to go to Harvard, but she’s always seven steps behind everyone else in thinking through problems.
The “Harvard” backstory is indicative of the series’ overall tell-don’t-show approach. Instead of showing us a brilliant girl mysteriously trapped in a dead-end bartending job, the writers tell us that she got into Harvard—the broadest possible shorthand for “smart”—as if this information releases them from the need to show Sommers acting with any striking intelligence.
Tell-don’t-show is always annoying, but it can be fatal if it prevents the characters from earning payoffs.
That’s the biggest problem with Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers went from innocent (but secretly special) bystander to human weapon in the pilot. That episode concluded with her menacingly telling Miguel Ferrer’s character to stay away from her because she “knew what she was capable of” now and that if he sent people after her, she’d “bury them one after another.”
I was kind of thrilled to see this dark tone; the sentiment—a bionic woman who’s a reluctant killing machine—is intriguing. But none of her transformation was earned: She’d had one short fist fight. She actually had no idea what she was capable of; it was never clear that she was cold-blooded enough to take a life.
The pernicious problem with lazy character writing is that it undermines and makes ridiculous even sound plotting that takes the tone of a series in the right direction. This is everywhere on display in Bionic Woman.
(I’m sure no one else is bothered by this, but I also don’t get the crypto political references to “Halliburton” or “Hillary Clinton.” It’s as if the writers are trying to signal some ideological leaning in what they think is the most obvious code in the world, but it comes across as non sequitor. Have we reached the point where all you have to do is have a character say “I’ll call Halliburton”—out of nowhere—and audiences are supposed to think that he’s a scary man who puts ends above means?)
The one bright spot has been the prototype bionic woman, Sarah Corvus. She’s all motivation, and it’s both reasonably consistent and quite interesting: Corvus became bionic, lost control, and started killing people. She didn’t really mean to, it seems, but she thought the source of her weakness was her remaining human parts, so she started giving herself more bionics. Now, it seems that her bionics may be killing her. And she doesn’t want to die. (This is all way more engrossing than the Jaime Sommers storyline, but it doesn’t hurt that Corvus actually gets clever dialogue and is played by Katee Sackhoff, who’s the most interesting actor on the show.)
The simple solution would be to make a radical switch: turn the show into Sarah Corvus: Bionic Woman and move Jaime Sommers to the backburner. Obviously, that won’t happen. But I wish something drastic would.
Bionic Woman has all sorts of problems. Some of them, like the tacked on little-sister storyline, are understandable. Some of them, like the underwritten and not-terribly-charismatic lead, are structural. And some of them--like the incompetent editing, poor scoring, and laughable f/x--are incomprehensible. (Battlestar Galactica and Heroes have raised the bar to point where there just shouldn't be any compromises made in f/x on TV.)
That last category of problems is readily fixable given a talented, engaged showrunner. Some of the other problems are less easily fixed.
Take the lead, Jaime Sommers: As written, Sommers vacillates widely, from naïve over-achiever, to hardened bad-ass, to dim, struggling parental surrogate. Who is she really? So many shows have grappled with strong female leads in recent years—Buffy, Karen Sisco, Alias, Veronica Mars—that if you can’t get this basic characterization right, then you might was well fold up shop.
Instead, with Sommers, we get a muddled mess. We’re told that she was bright enough to go to Harvard, but she’s always seven steps behind everyone else in thinking through problems.
The “Harvard” backstory is indicative of the series’ overall tell-don’t-show approach. Instead of showing us a brilliant girl mysteriously trapped in a dead-end bartending job, the writers tell us that she got into Harvard—the broadest possible shorthand for “smart”—as if this information releases them from the need to show Sommers acting with any striking intelligence.
Tell-don’t-show is always annoying, but it can be fatal if it prevents the characters from earning payoffs.
That’s the biggest problem with Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers went from innocent (but secretly special) bystander to human weapon in the pilot. That episode concluded with her menacingly telling Miguel Ferrer’s character to stay away from her because she “knew what she was capable of” now and that if he sent people after her, she’d “bury them one after another.”
I was kind of thrilled to see this dark tone; the sentiment—a bionic woman who’s a reluctant killing machine—is intriguing. But none of her transformation was earned: She’d had one short fist fight. She actually had no idea what she was capable of; it was never clear that she was cold-blooded enough to take a life.
The pernicious problem with lazy character writing is that it undermines and makes ridiculous even sound plotting that takes the tone of a series in the right direction. This is everywhere on display in Bionic Woman.
(I’m sure no one else is bothered by this, but I also don’t get the crypto political references to “Halliburton” or “Hillary Clinton.” It’s as if the writers are trying to signal some ideological leaning in what they think is the most obvious code in the world, but it comes across as non sequitor. Have we reached the point where all you have to do is have a character say “I’ll call Halliburton”—out of nowhere—and audiences are supposed to think that he’s a scary man who puts ends above means?)
The one bright spot has been the prototype bionic woman, Sarah Corvus. She’s all motivation, and it’s both reasonably consistent and quite interesting: Corvus became bionic, lost control, and started killing people. She didn’t really mean to, it seems, but she thought the source of her weakness was her remaining human parts, so she started giving herself more bionics. Now, it seems that her bionics may be killing her. And she doesn’t want to die. (This is all way more engrossing than the Jaime Sommers storyline, but it doesn’t hurt that Corvus actually gets clever dialogue and is played by Katee Sackhoff, who’s the most interesting actor on the show.)
The simple solution would be to make a radical switch: turn the show into Sarah Corvus: Bionic Woman and move Jaime Sommers to the backburner. Obviously, that won’t happen. But I wish something drastic would.
"First Orgy After Brian's Death Very Solemn"
From the Onion:
I don't even quite know what that means. But it's awesome.
"Nobody knew Brian like we did—not his parents, not his brother, not even his wife," fuck-fiend Rebecca Baker said. "After all, Brian was more than just a guy who sometimes strapped on a jelly dong and did you from the side."
I don't even quite know what that means. But it's awesome.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Die Boston Die
Perhaps the greatest anti-Boston rap ever composed:
Quasi-secret admission: I really like the Red Sox and I find this Patriots team to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing bits of football product ever made. With the Eagles in self-destruct mode, the Pats are the only other team that gives me any pleasure to watch.
10. Bitch about the Boston accents in any film or TV show. “Yeah, ‘The Depahted’ was fackin’ great, but they don’t talk like that in fackin’ REVEEEEAH!!!!!” Yes, no film could ever accurately depict just how real, how fierce your hardscrabble Newton upbringing was.
11. Adopt the attitude that you, yes you, DESERVE this success. “Hey, we Pats fans know how it used to be back in the day. We earned these titles.” Don’t treat your team’s good fortune as the stroke of good fortune it happens to be. No, no, no. Your championship has to be deeper then someone else’s championship. It has to mean something more. Why? Because you fancy yourself as being introspective. Cockgobbler. Treat it like some sort of karmic reward for Len Bias dying, or some other twisted, idiotic explanation.
Quasi-secret admission: I really like the Red Sox and I find this Patriots team to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing bits of football product ever made. With the Eagles in self-destruct mode, the Pats are the only other team that gives me any pleasure to watch.
The Middle of the Beginning of the End: Updated
I confess to always being secretly conflicted about Andy Reid. He's not a very good in-game coach, but he seems to have a real talent for managing the week leading up to the game and particularly for keeping a cool head and his teams together when trouble hits. It's a zen thing he's got going on, a little like Phil Jackson, only without Tex Winter there to actually do X's and O's for him.
But since he first did his ridiculous public insisting that Doug Pederson was the future of the Eagles, I've been wary of him. He has a tendency to lie and worse, to treat the sports media with some contempt. At some level I get both of these things: (1) His job is to protect the psyches of his players so they can win games; (2) The media don't help him win games, so why be nice or candid with them?
Yet it seems to me that while there may not be an affirmative duty to be gracious or candid with reporters (and by extension with the fans), as a professional there is some minimal duty not to actively insist on things which you, and everyone else, know not to be true. Maybe that's asking too much. But at the end of the day, shouldn't there be some acknowledgment that being a head coach is just a job, like being a beat reporter, and that all of us working stiffs generally should treat each other decently, at least so long as it doesn't cost us anything?
So while I want the Eagles to win, there's a silver lining in this disastrous season seeing Reid come a little unglued. From Phil Sheridan:
A perfect example of how Capt. Andy can behave like a jerk. He doesn't have to answer that question with serious introspection. He needn't even concede the obvious if he believes that it's important to stand by his team. He could politely side-step the question with normal sports pablum about one-game-at-a-time, keep our focus, don't get ahead of ourselves, we're a good team that's caught some bad breaks, etc. (He could even have given a stat or two about 2-4 teams that have gone on to make the playoffs; it happens.)
But instead, he refuses to even acknowledge what is a perfectly fair question from a bunch of guys who are just doing their jobs.
Moments like these are why I won't cry when Reid leaves town.
Update: Galley Friend T.R. writes in:
But since he first did his ridiculous public insisting that Doug Pederson was the future of the Eagles, I've been wary of him. He has a tendency to lie and worse, to treat the sports media with some contempt. At some level I get both of these things: (1) His job is to protect the psyches of his players so they can win games; (2) The media don't help him win games, so why be nice or candid with them?
Yet it seems to me that while there may not be an affirmative duty to be gracious or candid with reporters (and by extension with the fans), as a professional there is some minimal duty not to actively insist on things which you, and everyone else, know not to be true. Maybe that's asking too much. But at the end of the day, shouldn't there be some acknowledgment that being a head coach is just a job, like being a beat reporter, and that all of us working stiffs generally should treat each other decently, at least so long as it doesn't cost us anything?
So while I want the Eagles to win, there's a silver lining in this disastrous season seeing Reid come a little unglued. From Phil Sheridan:
In his postgame news conference, Eagles coach Andy Reid treated the assembled reporters as if they had called plays in the red zone for him. Reid, who promised to provide answers to his offensive woes after last week's ugly win over the Jets, had none for the cameras and microphones.
Asked whether the Eagles' season is in peril, Reid seethed, "I'll take the next question."
A perfect example of how Capt. Andy can behave like a jerk. He doesn't have to answer that question with serious introspection. He needn't even concede the obvious if he believes that it's important to stand by his team. He could politely side-step the question with normal sports pablum about one-game-at-a-time, keep our focus, don't get ahead of ourselves, we're a good team that's caught some bad breaks, etc. (He could even have given a stat or two about 2-4 teams that have gone on to make the playoffs; it happens.)
But instead, he refuses to even acknowledge what is a perfectly fair question from a bunch of guys who are just doing their jobs.
Moments like these are why I won't cry when Reid leaves town.
Update: Galley Friend T.R. writes in:
This morning I received an email from my brother-in-law, perhaps the most heretofore die-hard Eagles fan I know (and I know some really quite sick and damaged ones). This is the kind of guy who drives hours just to get in radio range and sit and listen in his car.
Now he has stopped watching, not because of the losing, but because of the tiresome contempt A.R. shows for . . . all of us.
It used to make me crazy when the Eagles went to the shotgun on first-and-10 with a lead. Then it made me wry. Now it makes me a little sad.
In terms of his offense, I always thought that eventually either reality would catch up to Reid, or he would catch up to reality. But now I know that neither of those things will happen. Who else has adopted this scheme? What winners are trying to emulate the Eagles? Not even his only “disciple” in the league, Childress. And what evidence would it take--now, COULD it take--for him to balance the offense? There is none, and there won’t be.
This might take a while to play out. And it could be painful to watch.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Pats = Slightly Evil?
I found this on the internet, so I'm just assuming it's true. Here's Dan Shanoff's report on more Patriots front-office machinations:
Next up: Kraft and Belichik dissolve the Senate and raise an army of clones.
In a move far more insidious than spying on the football field, the Pats will get the names of their season-ticket-holding fans who (re-)sold their tickets on StubHub (presumably to punish them for not letting the team re-sell them).
I'm no fan of price-gouging (or the ticket brokers who mostly engage in it), but I'm even less of a fan of a team's invasions of privacy against its fan base.
Next up: Kraft and Belichik dissolve the Senate and raise an army of clones.
Sony Style
Good news! Sony is bringing the 40 GB model of the PS3 to America and cutting the price of its 80 GB model from $600 to $500. For those of you keeping score at home, that's the fourth change in price and configuration in about a year. Oh, and the 40 GB version isn't backward compatible with PS2 games. Why? Here's Sony's Jack Tretton to explain:
“We're choosing to focus on the PlayStation 2 consumer with the PlayStation 2, which remains incredibly relevant, and focus on the PlayStation 3 consumer with the new 40GB model and the great software coming out."
I'll let you work the translation.
In totally unrelated news, Sony is selling 60 percent of the production facilities it built just a short while ago to make the Cell 3 processor chip used in the PS3.
“We're choosing to focus on the PlayStation 2 consumer with the PlayStation 2, which remains incredibly relevant, and focus on the PlayStation 3 consumer with the new 40GB model and the great software coming out."
I'll let you work the translation.
In totally unrelated news, Sony is selling 60 percent of the production facilities it built just a short while ago to make the Cell 3 processor chip used in the PS3.
The Fox NFL Robot
You know who I'm talking about. Turns out the strange gimmick has a small following.
He's even got his own action figure. Weird.
He's even got his own action figure. Weird.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Tyler Perry: A Big, Bright, Shining Star
The great William Goldman defines a movie star as an actor who can generate a big opening weekend gross. After the opening weekend, word of mouth can sink or lift a movie, but for that first weekend it's most often the star that puts people in the seats.
Using this definition Goldman posited in the mid-'90s that Jim Carrey was the biggest star in Hollywood--as opposed to, say, Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis--because he was able to generate big opening weekends for movies that, without his presence, would have barely registered a blip. Goldman believed that Adam Sandler succeeded Carrey as Hollywood's biggest star for the same reason in the mid- to late-'90s.
I'd posit for discussion that Tyler Perry might be on the verge of becoming a giant movie star, maybe the biggest in Hollywood. Last weekend his Why Did I Get Married? opened to $21.3M. It was his third-consecutive #1 opening. The other two movies opened to $21.9M and $30M. None of these films opened in more than 2,200 theaters.
To give some perspective, here are Carrey's early opening-weekend successes, with their theater counts:
12/16/94 Dumb and Dumber $16,363,442 2,447
07/29/94 The Mask $23,117,068 2,360
02/04/94 Ace Ventura $12,115,105 1,750
Here's Sandler's:
2/13/98 The Wedding Singer $18,865,080 2,821
2/16/96 Happy Gilmore $8,514,125 2,022
2/10/95 Billy Madison $6,639,080 1,834
And here's Perry's:
10/12/07 Why Did I Get Married $21,353,789 2,011
02/24/06 Madea's Family Reunion $30,030,661 2,194
02/25/05 Diary of a Mad . . . $21,905,089 1,483
If anything, I'd say that Perry's short run is even more impressive given that his budgets are a fraction of even what Carrey and Sandler's cheap movies cost and while I don't have the numbers on it, I'd bet Perry's studio, LGF, spent less money on advertising support. Probably a lot less.
Perry's have a great run. It'll be interesting to see what happens for him next.
Using this definition Goldman posited in the mid-'90s that Jim Carrey was the biggest star in Hollywood--as opposed to, say, Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis--because he was able to generate big opening weekends for movies that, without his presence, would have barely registered a blip. Goldman believed that Adam Sandler succeeded Carrey as Hollywood's biggest star for the same reason in the mid- to late-'90s.
I'd posit for discussion that Tyler Perry might be on the verge of becoming a giant movie star, maybe the biggest in Hollywood. Last weekend his Why Did I Get Married? opened to $21.3M. It was his third-consecutive #1 opening. The other two movies opened to $21.9M and $30M. None of these films opened in more than 2,200 theaters.
To give some perspective, here are Carrey's early opening-weekend successes, with their theater counts:
12/16/94 Dumb and Dumber $16,363,442 2,447
07/29/94 The Mask $23,117,068 2,360
02/04/94 Ace Ventura $12,115,105 1,750
Here's Sandler's:
2/13/98 The Wedding Singer $18,865,080 2,821
2/16/96 Happy Gilmore $8,514,125 2,022
2/10/95 Billy Madison $6,639,080 1,834
And here's Perry's:
10/12/07 Why Did I Get Married $21,353,789 2,011
02/24/06 Madea's Family Reunion $30,030,661 2,194
02/25/05 Diary of a Mad . . . $21,905,089 1,483
If anything, I'd say that Perry's short run is even more impressive given that his budgets are a fraction of even what Carrey and Sandler's cheap movies cost and while I don't have the numbers on it, I'd bet Perry's studio, LGF, spent less money on advertising support. Probably a lot less.
Perry's have a great run. It'll be interesting to see what happens for him next.
The Matchless Genius of Matt Labash
If you didn't go yesterday, you're only hurting yourself, baby. Today Labash mounts a credible case for theism based on Angie Harmon.
So hot.
So hot.
More on the Rox
Dan McLaughlin antes up and gives us a really excellent discussion of the Rockies' streak by delving into Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein's book Baseball Dynasties, which has a list of the ten greatest stretch runs of all time.
I don't want to spoil his conclusions, so go read it. It's great stuff.
I don't want to spoil his conclusions, so go read it. It's great stuff.
A Very Wookie Christmas
Pursuant to my question yesterday about the strange clip of Han Solo in the Wilhelm scream compilation, Galley Reader P.G. sends us this, the lost Star Wars Holiday Special:
People will have their own opinions, but for me the worst moment was Carrie Fisher's musical number, which managed to not only be terrible on its own terms, but to bastardize part of the original John Williams score, too.
The best moment, oddly, is the plug for the toys at the end. God, I loved the landspeeder and the X-Wing. And, I don't want to brag or anything, but I had the AT-AT. Yeah, that's right. Thanks mom!
People will have their own opinions, but for me the worst moment was Carrie Fisher's musical number, which managed to not only be terrible on its own terms, but to bastardize part of the original John Williams score, too.
The best moment, oddly, is the plug for the toys at the end. God, I loved the landspeeder and the X-Wing. And, I don't want to brag or anything, but I had the AT-AT. Yeah, that's right. Thanks mom!
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